The pandemic has significantly impacted consumers’ shopping and buying behavior, accelerating the adoption of digital technologies and a boom in eCommerce within the retail sector.
As a result of this shift, brick-and-mortar retailers looking to create a winning post-pandemic business model have turned to self-service solutions like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) and click-and-collect methods to keep physical contact to a minimum and entice consumers back into stores.
See also: Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ Cashierless Tech Goes Big With New Grocery Store
Last year, for example, Amazon announced the launch of its first full-size Amazon Fresh grocery store in the U.S. with the company’s ‘Just Walk Out’ cashierless checkout technology. The company leverages technologies like ceiling cameras and shelf weight sensors in stores that automatically update shoppers’ virtual carts as they add and remove items from their physical carts.
However, according to Trinh Le-Fiedler, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence (AI) startup Nomitri, while solutions like Amazon’s provide sophisticated real-time AI intelligence, they require significant upfront costs to purchase the digital hardware required.
That is where Nomitri, launched in Berlin in 2021, is trying to disrupt the checkout market and differentiate itself from its competitors, providing physical retailers with an asset-light, low-cost solution that can be downloaded on any mobile phone — without the need to install multiple cameras or sensors in stores or supermarkets.
“We understand that retailers don’t have the money to invest upfront on all this infrastructure, and they also don’t have the time and sophistication in terms of IT departments to set all this up,” Le-Fiedler told PYMNTS in an interview.
The mobile-based embedded AI solution has also been designed in a way to ensure that video data never leaves the customer’s device, protecting users’ privacy in a region — Europe — that is home to some of the toughest data privacy laws in the world.
Even though Nomitri launched in Germany, Le-Fiedler said their goal to disrupt the checkout market extends far beyond just one country or region.
“We’re not only trying to fill a gap in Germany, we believe that it’s a global niche that we are uniquely positioning to cover,” she said.
Direct Retailer-Consumer Relationship
Beyond the main selling point of lowering hardware cost for retailers, Le-Fiedler said merchants see a huge benefit in communicating directly with their customers on the app, with the possibility to offer promotion codes and discounts in real-time when an item is picked up from the shelf.
Offline retailers are also evaluating the different ways they can leverage the huge amounts of data they would have accumulated on customers’ shopping behaviors over time to create a personalized and data-driven customer experience. This includes where they shop, what they purchase and how often they buy in-store.
“What I see and hear from my retailer customers is that they care a lot about the intimate relationship that they used to have with their customers when they walk into their store — and they realize that they are slowly losing it,” Le-Fiedler said.
She added that the growing number of competitors that have been able to entice consumers to make the shift to online shopping is one of the biggest concerns of her retail customers, who are constantly in search of new ways to innovate and retain market share.
US Market First Before EU Expansion
From all indications, it is not only retailers who have seen the value the Berlin-based retail AI software company brings to the table. The digital self-checkout solution has also caught the attention of investors, who recently injected €2.5 million ($2.7 million) to help expand the business.
For Le-Fiedler, the checkout market is entering a “super disruptive but also very quick changing environment” in terms of daily shopping behavior, which is why building a hardware-agnostic platform was important right from the start.
But operating in the ever-evolving deep tech and new technologies space means finding agile and flexible talent is often a hurdle — one that Le-Fiedler is tackling by avoiding talent overly-specialized in their fields.
“I tend not to hire experts who’ve been around for 10 years, but rather people who have the attitude to do the work that needs to be done,” she said, adding that should another crisis unfold in two years’ time, “I need to have an organization, as well as a software architecture, that is able to adjust to that [change].”
Read more: To Win Big, EU Firms Must First Win US, Says Hoxton Ventures Partner
When it comes to expansion plans, Le-Fiedler said their goal is to target the U.S. first before expanding their European footprint — a strategy that would yield far bigger financial returns, given the homogeneous nature of the U.S. market and consumers’ openness to new innovations and technology.
“You get faster feedback there [in the U.S.], and you don’t have to take care of the nitty-gritty hurdles in terms of translating into different languages and dealing with different regulations,” she said. “I think Europe is mostly not a great place to launch something and scale it fast.”
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